Today I am reprinting a blog from Harry Targ's
Diary of a Heartland Radical reporting on the widespread misery in Indiana, thanks to more than ten years of hard right government. It illustrates the terrible price we have to pay for the millionaire ideologues that are running the country.
THE
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDIANA 2017
Social
and Economic Wellbeing Survey Shows No Progress
A
flurry of newspaper stories appeared the first week of February
in The
Wall Street Journal and
several Indiana newspapers reporting on data from a “health and
wellness” national survey about the performance of the 50 states.
Indiana according to several measures was ranked as the fourth “worst
state” in the country. The national survey consisted of data from
177,281 people interviewed by the Gallup and Healthways
organizations. Data included responses to questions about feelings of
community support and pride, physical health, and financial
security.
According
to the survey The
Times of Northwest Indiana, (February
8, 2017) reported, “31.3 percent of Indiana residents are obese,
30.6 smoke, and 29.4 percent don’t exercise at all.” Only 24.9
percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree (one of the
lowest percentages of any state). The NWIT
article
indicated that median household income of Hoosiers was $5,000 less
than the national median income.
As The
Wall Street Journal put
it: “Indiana is one of just a handful of states to rank worse in
every category of well-being--sense of purpose, social life,
financial health, community pride, and physical fitness--than most
other states…” On all these measures combined Indiana’s
rank was only ahead of Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West
Virginia.
Previous
Data on the Indiana Economy
The
centerpiece of Indiana public policy since 2004 has been corporate
and individual tax cuts and reduced budgets for education, health
care, and other public services. Indiana was one of the first states
to begin the privatization of the public sector, including
transferring educational funds from public to charter schools. It
established a voucher system to encourage parents to send their
children to private schools. Also Indiana sold public roads;
privatized public services; and recruited controversial corporations
such as Duke Power to support research at the state’s flagship
research universities. Meanwhile the manufacturing base of the state
shifted from higher paying and unionized industrial labor
(automobiles, steel, and durable goods) to lower paying service jobs
and non-union work such as at the Amazon distribution center.
The
narrative about Indiana economic growth presented by the former
Governor Mike Pence varied greatly from data gathered between 2012
and 2014. For example, between 2013 and 2014, despite enticements to
business, Indiana grew at a 0.4 percent pace while the nation at
large experienced 2.2 percent growth.
Indiana’s
economy historically was based on manufacturing but has experienced
declines since the 1980s (with only modest increases in recent
years). However, newer manufacturing between 2014 and 2016 has
been mostly in low-wage non-unionized sectors. For
example, the Indiana Institute for Working Families reported on data
from a study of work and poverty in Marion County, which includes the
state’s largest city, Indianapolis. Four of five of the
largest growing industries in the county paid wages at or below
family sustainability ($798 per week for a family of three) and
individual and household wages declined significantly between 2008
and 2012 (Derek Thomas, “Inequality in Indy - A Rising Problem With
Ready Solutions,” August 13, 2014, (www.iiwf.blogspot.com).
Further,
Thomas quoted a U.S. Conference of Mayors’ report on wages and
income: “…wage inequality grew twice as rapidly in the
Indianapolis metro area as in the rest of the nation since the
recession.” This is so because new jobs created paid less on
average than the jobs that were lost since the recession started.
Thomas
pointed out that the mayors’ report had several concrete proposals
that could address declining real wages and stimulate job growth.
These included “raising the minimum wage, strengthening the Earned
Income Tax Credit, public programs to retrain displaced workers,”
and developing universal pre-kindergarten and programs to rebuild the
state’s crumbling infrastructure. They may have added that
declining real wages also relates to attacks on unions in both the
private and public sectors and the dramatic reduction in public
sector employment.
Thomas
recommended in 2012 that Indianapolis (and Indiana) should have taken
these data seriously because in Marion County “poverty is still
rising, the minimum wage is less than half of what it takes for a
single-mother with an infant to be economically self-sufficient; 47
percent of workers do not have access to a paid sick day from work,
and a full 32 percent are at or below 150 percent of the federal
poverty guidelines ($29,685 for a family of three).”
More
recently, November 10, 2014, the Indiana Association of United Ways
issued a 250 page report on the state called the “Study of
Financial Hardship.” The study, parallel to similar studies in five
other states and prepared by a research team at Rutgers University,
introduced the concept of Asset Limited, Income Constrained,
Employed or (ALICE). ALICE refers to households with incomes that are
above the poverty rate but below “the basic cost of living.” The
startling data revealed that:
-a
third of Hoosier households cannot afford adequate housing, food,
health care, child care, and transportation.
-specifically,
14 percent of households are below the poverty line and 23 percent
above poverty but below the threshold out of ALICE, or earning enough
to provide for the basic cost of living.
-570,000
households are within the ALICE status and 353,000 below the poverty
line.
-over
21 percent of households in every Indiana county are above poverty
but below the capacity to provide for basic sustenance.
Referring
to those within the ALICE category of wage earners who have struggled
to survive but earn less than what it takes to meet basic needs,
Kathy Ertel, Board Chairperson of Indiana Association of United Ways
said: “ALICE is our child care worker, our retail clerk, the CAN
who cares for our grandparents, and our delivery driver” (Roger L.
Frick, “Groundbreaking Study Reveals 37% of Hoosier Households
Struggle With the Basics,” Indiana Association of United Ways,
November 10, 2014, Roger.Frick@iauw.org).
Indiana
Politics
Perhaps
the starkest fact to note in reference to the growing economic
insecurity in the state of Indiana over time is that in 1970 forty
percent of Hoosier workers were in unions, then the state with the
third highest union density. By the dawn of the second decade of the
twenty-first century only 11 percent of workers were in trade unions.
Recent legislation has disadvantaged Hoosier workers including
passage of a Right to Work law and repeal of the state version of
prevailing wage. The Mitch Daniels/Mike Pence administrations
(2004-2016) have used charter schools and vouchers to weaken teachers
unions. In addition, in his first day in office in January, 2004,
newly elected Governor Mitch Daniels signed an executive order
abolishing the right of state employees to form unions.
In
2005 the Indiana state government (legislature and governor) passed
the first and most extreme voter identification law. Voters were
required to secure voter identification photos. Michael Macdonald a
University of Florida political scientist estimated that requiring
voter IDs reduces voter participation by 4-5 percent, hitting the
poor and elderly the hardest. In addition, Indiana law ended voter
registration in the state one month before election day. And polls
close at 6 p.m. election day, among the earliest closing times in the
country. Finally, requests for absentee ballots require written
excuses.
Traditionally
when Democrats were in the Governor’s mansion and/or controlled a
branch of the legislature, they too tended to support neoliberal
economic policies, but less draconian, and had been more moderate on
social policy questions. In recent years, many legislators and the
two most recent governors have been friends of or received support
from the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) funded by
major corporations and the Koch brothers.
With
ALEC money, some active Tea Party organizations, the growth of
rightwing Republican power, and centrist Democrats, Indiana
government has been able to initiate some of the most regressive
policies in reference to voting rights, education, taxing, and
deregulation in the country. And as the data above suggests, the
political economy of Indiana has increased the suffering of the vast
majority of working families in the state. Other data suggests that
the quality of health care, education, the environment, and
transportation have declined as well.
In
sum, the working people of Indiana enter the coming period with
little economic hope, a politics of red state dominance, and the
number two person in the White House who bears some responsibility
for the economics and politics left behind. Social change in Indiana,
as with the nation at large, will require a vibrant, active
progressive program in the electoral arena, the 2018 elections for
example, at the same time that mass movements direct their attention
to improving the lives of the 99 percent.
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